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June 1, 2004
Dear Friends,
We are in the final leg of our journey across the United States,
speaking about Christians in Palestine, and sharing our film “Salt
of the Earth.” We hope that those of you living in Pennsylvania,
New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts will be able
to come to our June events, and those of you in the Chicago area
might be able to attend the Chicago Palestine Film Festival, which
will show six of the nine chapters of “Salt of the Earth”
on June 20 and 27. Details for our upcoming programs, film clips,
links, and a host of resources of how to get involved are available
on our renovated Web site at www.saltfilms.net.
If you haven’t visited in a while, we encourage you to check
it out.
The past five months of our coast-to-coast tour have been challenging
and fulfilling. We have especially enjoyed traveling with Zababdeh’s
clergy. Father Firas (Melkite), Father Toma (Orthodox), and Father
Aktham (Roman Catholic) have all been able to accompany us on
parts of our journey, and we look forward to the Episcopal priest
Father Fadi joining us in June. We were pleased not only because
we miss our friends in Zababdeh, but also because it gave so many
folks here the opportunity to get to know these Palestinian Christian
leaders. And it gave us the opportunity to return a bit of the
hospitality we received in Palestine; between programs, we managed
to give them a bit of American-style fun, ranging from putt-putt
to roller coasters, from feeding baby alligators to visiting the
Lincoln Memorial.
Not everything here has been so innocent or fun, however. While
our talks are often met with enthusiasm and interest, we also
encounter hopelessness and helpless frustration with the cycle
of violence, with the atrocities on our TV screens. At times we’ve
been met with an almost visceral anger, accused of being hateful
and bigoted. And other times we have received comments like these:
- “Well, you know, the real problem over there is that
Jews are greedy.
- “That’s why they’ve had problems throughout
history.”
- “We don’t hear the true story of the Middle East
here because Jews control the media and the money - just like
it was in Germany.”
It is a chilling experience to hear these assertions here in
United States, where we prefer to pretend that such hateful and
ignorant prejudice is no longer accepted in the mainstream. Those
who have felt free to share their anti-Jewish sentiments with
us have assumed that we must agree. Presumably, the thinking goes,
anyone who cares about Palestinians must hate Jews. This anti-Semitism
is one manifestation of a binary thinking, a “friend or
foe—with us or against us” mentality infecting a large
part of our nation. Commonly, it can be heard driving much of
the political discourse on our airwaves; in its extreme, it can
lead to dehumanizing atrocities, as those our military committed
at Abu Ghraib.
Scripture points squarely away from such logic. We are all created
in the image of God, but we’re also all children of Adam
and Eve. Each and every human being, regardless of confession,
race, nationality, or even political party, is capable of both
sin and grace. We are a full-spectrum creation, and God has given
us the ability to see all its wonder and horror in all its color
and nuance. We have the ability and the responsibility to observe
and struggle with the complexities and subtleties of our world,
of our neighbors, of our enemies, and of our own hearts. It is
not only unethical, but fundamentally unfaithful for believers
to dismiss Jews as greedy, Muslims as blood-thirsty; Israelis
as wicked, Palestinians as terrorists, Americans as callous. But
the reverse is true as well, and the faithful should never assert
that “we” (whoever we are) are above reproach while
“they” are beyond care. Rather than choosing to be
pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, faithful people should be discerning
how to be pro-gospel and therefore pro-justice, pro-mercy, pro-grace,
and pro-peace, standing alongside the many brave Palestinians
and Israelis, Jews, Muslims, and Christians, who daily and doggedly
strive together for a shared future.
Christian Zionism
- “We have to support Israel because Scripture says so.
If the entirety of the Holy Land isn’t in Jewish hands,
how can Jesus come back?”
- “I’ve seen the suffering of Palestinians, but
that’s God’s will for fulfillment of prophesy—war
was foretold in the end days, so if we fight it, we will be
fighting God Himself.”
At the heart of such understanding is the school of theology
known as dispensationalism. Simply put, dispensationalism assumes
that salvation history is laid out in different eras, during each
of which God places different demands on faithful people. It is
commonly held by many dispensationalists that we have emerged
from the era of the Church, when the demands on the faithful were
to be disciples of Christ and his Body on earth, and are headed
into the era of the tribulation, when the demand is to ensure
the fulfillment of prophesy for the end times. The timing of the
rapture (an imaginative interpretation of I Corinthians 15:52
whereby all the faithful will be whisked up to heaven leaving
the rest of the world to suffer—the basis for the popular
“Left Behind” book and film series) and other particulars
vary, but a constant is the focus on fulfillment of prophesy played
out as unconditional allegiance to the modern state of Israel.
Dubbed “Christian Zionism,” this theology contradicts
many of the foundations of the Christian faith. First, unconditional
allegiance to anything other than God is idolatry. Second, central
to Christianity is the understanding that God is constant, unchanging,
and faithful. Dispensationalism threatens to make God fickle.
Even more offensive is the notion that we can speed up or hinder
God’s actions, making the Creation more powerful than the
Creator, reducing God to our puppet or wind-up toy. The notion
that we can know exactly how and when God’s prophecy will
be fulfilled is the ultimate in arrogance and pride. We dare not
presume to know, much less predict, the mind of God; this was
the first sin in Eden; it was the folly of the Tower of Babel;
it was Peter drawing his sword in the Garden of Gethsemane. If
fulfillment of prophesy in Scripture has shown us anything, it
shows us that divine prophecy is fulfilled, but in ways we don’t
expect and can hardly imagine. Christ was not the political ruler
that even his disciples expected, the Messiah come to oust the
Roman occupiers and reestablish the Davidic throne. Rather, Scripture
was fulfilled with a Prince of Peace whose crown was of thorns
and whose throne was a cross. What makes us so sure we can or
should know the designs of God’s plan for the end of days?
In its treatment of Jews and Arabs, Christian Zionism is guilty
of a more inclusive anti-Semitism than the hateful prejudice mentioned
earlier. Its certitude of future events looks toward final battles
rather than peaceful coexistence; Pat Robertson has gone so far
as to declare weather patterns as evidence of God’s displeasure
with any peace negotiations in the Middle East. Christian Zionists
not only ignore the distress of their fellow believers in Israel
and Palestine, but treat Muslims and Jews there as pawns in holy
war-games, whose victory is a salvation from which they are excluded.
On this holy day of Pentecost, it is our ardent prayer that the
American Church be gifted with open ears to hear the voice of
the Holy Spirit rather than the voice of man. May the Church arise
from arrogance and complacency to shape disciples of Christ, humble
servants of our Lord who loves all of Creation and called it good,
who called us to be peacemakers and to serve as instruments of
justice and mercy and peace throughout the world, for all those
created in the image of God. As we hear the many languages of
the Church throughout the world, including Palestine and Israel
and Iraq and the United States, may we all leave behind our nationalistic
idolatries and return to our one allegiance to the Kingdom of
Heaven. Thus united, and serving Christ, may we hear his voice
anew, calling us to love our enemies. Let us not make Peter’s
mistake in the Garden; let us put our swords away and follow the
Prince of Peace.
Grace and Peace,
Marthame and Elizabeth
P.S. We expect that the full video series of Salt of the Earth
will be completed in the Fall. We will send another email when
it is ready for distribution. Please make sure we have your up-to-date
email address.
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